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Saturday, May 31, 2008

the elements conspire.

nothing puts a damper on an indie craft show quite like torrential downpours, severe thunderstorm alerts and tornado watches. such was the case with the first day of the art star craft bazaar. we were weak. for the first time ever, aitor and i packed it in after only an hour or two of setting up (the rain had the good graces to let us all set up before commencing). i felt like i was losing some of the toughness i used to be so proud of, but we also lost a lot of stock to the rain at renegade brooklyn last year and learned some lessons. i'm hugely grateful to the organisers, megan and erin, for being so understanding about pack-ups and for taking all the bad luck in stride.

on the positive, this gave us an unexpected day off in philadelphia (a city aitor and i struggle to love). this also gave us a chance to visit art star's new space which, by the way, is beautiful. it has a much larger gallery space and is packed to the gills with all the great boutique stuff that they had before, with even more space to display them. i have no pictures because i was feeling too soggy to sort through the car for my camera.

we then met up with our friend paul at his studio. we were kind of a sorry sight - all wet, frizzy and dirty and (speaking for myself) wavering down the hallways with a massive headache it tow.

in our stupor, we then followed paul to the mad maude press, a huge letterpress operation run by his friend ryan. it was a really stupendous set-up, especially since we relate space to rental rates in toronto. i guess north philly hasn't quite caught up yet. i felt bad for being so woozy while exploring such a grand operation. but i did manage to explore around the shop and take some pictures.

after a little dose of ibuprofen and a nap, paul woke us up to say that his friend julie was making dinner and had invited us all over to join her. julie's place was amazing - a real home with kids running around and lots of yummy healthy food. we couldn't believe that our stinky rained out day had ended in a feast of homemade pasta and vegetables. julie also let us use her laundry to clean up all our dirty tables cloths which washed and dried as we sat on their patio sipping drinks and chatting and doing a mini show-and-tell of art and music. i was really blown away by the places our winding day took us, especially considering how grumpy the rain had made me at the outset. we rounded off the whole thing by setting up a walled canopy in paul's studio, running a portable air conditioner into it and having a nice cool camp-out in this warehouse in north philly.